For my son's 8th birthday, we did a Survivor theme since it's his favorite show.

I made the invitations on the computer using the Survivor logo that I had downloaded. He wanted to invite his whole class, so we had 20 kids at the party. For decorations, I ordered several tiki decorations from Oriental Trading. One decoration that looked great was a clearance priced straw/grass banner that had said, Class of 06 Survivor" that we cut off all of the words except for "Survivor." They looked great and we were excited to find a decoration that had the word Survivor in it! Besides the tikis the decorations centered around an island theme. The food table was a lot of fun using the island theme. We hollowed out the two halves of a pineapple and used them to put fruit in had a platter of all sorts of gummy bugs & critters and had lots of other island snacks.

When the kids arrived they got a snack got on their team buff and watched a few minutes of Survivor on DVD while we waited for everyone to arrive. The kids were divided into two tribes of 10 each. I made the buffs with handkercheif sized squares of red & blue fabric and ironed on the Survivor logo that I'd printed off of my computer. The teams were named "Siku" which means birthday in an African language and "Kipaji" which means present. We had five challenges during the three hour party. I bought a red & blue vinyl tablecloth for each team to assemble to hear the directions for each challenge.

For the first challenge teams had to set up their camps. They had to first find their tribe flag in the back yard which was where they were to set up camp.

Next they had to find a list of items that were hidden on the playground that would be used to set up their camp: a tent a bundle of sticks a pot a jug of water a container of rice and 10 rocks. Once they found everything the teams had to set up their tents and set up their campfires with the sticks & rocks (no fire obviously). They had to put their pots on their "fire" pour in the water & rice and all get in their tents and yell "Survivors Ready." The first team to do this won. For each challenge everyone who participated in a challenge got a tiki necklace that we had made with yarn and tikis printed on cardstock. The winning team also got a bonus necklace.

The second challenge was an obstacle course type challenge. Teams had to collect ten flags of their tribe color from ten different areas throughout the yard: jumping through tires tied around a tree with ropes looking under a series of upside down pots a balance beam with a rope at the end one hidden somewhere on the playground one buried in our sand box one flag was up a ladder on our playground one was at the top of some tall bushes one was at the end of a line of cones they had to run around and the last one was hidden under a large parachute that they had to climb under to find. This was a great challenge and the kids had sooooo much fun with it.

The third challenge was an eating challenge. We had really talked this up for a couple of weeks before the party so the kids really thought that they were going to have to eat gross stuff. We put ten sets of items in coconut shaped cups. (I had bought them for the kids to use as cups during the party but they proved too difficult to close.) One person from each tribe sat on a chair in front of the group. The two kids opened their coconuts at the same time and the first one to finish their item and stick out their tongues to show me (they loved that!) won the round. Again everyone got a tiki necklace just for participating and the winner got a second one. The items they had to eat were: gummy rats gummy frogs swamp mud (hershey's syrup) dirt (oreo crumbs) gummy worms sticks (hershey's cruch sticks) gummy turtles gummy fish gummy catepillars & bird droppings (junior mints). The kids had so much fun with this eating challenge - they're still talking about it!

The fourth challenge was an individual endurance challenge. We had set up boards like balance beams in the back yard. The kids had to stand on the boards without falling off for two minutes. After two minutes we had them stand on one foot then after another two minutes they had to stand on one foot with their hands above their heads and finally they had to stand on one foot with their hands above their heads and their eyes closed. All but about four kids had fallen off at that point so they were declared the "winners" and got a second bonus tiki necklace.

The final challenge was also individual and it was our "Tribal Council." We thought about this a lot in the planning and decided that we didn't want any of the kids to get voted out so we adapted it quite a bit. My husband made a big bonfire and the kids sat around it in a semi-circle. Each kid was given a wipe off board (that I had made by just laminating cardstock) and a wipe off marker. The kids were then asked trivia questions in multiple choice fashion. The questions were about my son like "What is Jake's favorite animal?" and they were also about island animals like "What is the longest snake?" If the child got the question wrong they were out of the challenge and then joined the "jury" which was just a separate area to sit. Any kids left at the end of the ten questions won the challenge.

After all five challenges we had cake. The cake was an island cake. I baked a large round cake and also a smaller dome shaped cake that I put on top of the round island to make a mountain. I decorated the island with green frosting graham cracker crumbs for the sand palm trees (lego) and a waterfall that started at the top of the mountain and ran all the way down the side of the cake. On the sandy part of the island I placed a campfire made of tootsie rolls & pretzels and I also made a little tiki hut out of toothpicks that I'd glued to a plastic cup. I surrounded the island with blue jello jigglers that I'd cut in squares and stacked around to make it look like the ocean. I also put gummy fish in and around the jigglers. The kids enjoyed picking which part of the island they wanted to eat! After cake we did presents.

At the end of the party the kids got to get their island rewards. We counted their tiki necklaces and the kids with the most necklaces got to pick first. The rewards were just bags of candy and stickers. They also got goodie bags that had survivor and island type goodies. All of the kids had a blast at the party. It was a lot of work but my son had a blast! "